As IBM’s Center for the Business of Government recently discovered, government CIOs don’t want sole ownership of Big Data. The irony isn’t lost on me since CIO does stand for Chief Information Officer. But when you peel back the onion a bit, their position starts to make sense.

Big Data is a new frontier for the public sector and it’s being generated by everything around us – all the time. It’s arriving from multiple sources at high velocity, volume, and variety. As it grows, CIOs and government leaders are trying to understand how to extract value that improves the functions of government while simultaneously addressing privacy and security issues.

So why don’t more government CIO’s see the importance of having IT units own the Big Data projects? Big Data is proving to be a useful resource beyond the back office. Many front office roles are starting to get more hands-on in their use of data and, frankly, they have a better understanding of their own needs and opportunities for innovation. Continue Reading »

IBM researcher Solomon Assefa likes to operate at the intersections of scientific domains and social institutions. It allows him to envision ways of using cutting-edge technologies to tackle new challenges. In a recent example of how his approach can pay off, he made the connections that resulted in a small team of IBM scientists helping boost a United Nations Children’s Fund social networking project that could improve the lives of millions throughout the continent of Africa. Continue Reading »

The U.S. Department of Interior is embarking on a multi-year process of shifting its traditional information technology systems to a cloud computing-based delivery model. The agency’s 16 bureaus and offices, which manage assets ranging from national parks and monuments to wildlife refuges, dams and reservoirs, spend in excess of $1 billion a year on IT—but have promised to save $100 million per year from 2016 to 2021 via the shift to the cloud.

The financial impact of the move will be substantial, but, in addition, the Interior department is putting in place a long-term strategy aimed at using the cloud to help transform the way it operates—making it more nimble, innovative and responsive to the needs of its constituents. It plans on using the savings it reaps from the shift to fund investments in new capabilities. Continue Reading »

In much of the developed world, innovative new digital technologies are being retrofitted onto aging infrastructure to make cities work better for the 21st century. But here in India we have a tremendous opportunity: to build new cities from the ground up with smart technologies. Using technology and planning, we can leapfrog the more mature economies.

That’s our goal in the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor, a public-private partnership aimed at creating a new transportation and urbanization corridor between India’s government capital city, Delhi, and its business capital, Mumbai, which is on the coast. Detailed planning has been underway for the project and we recently announced the plan for seven greenfield industrial cities. IBM helped create the Dighi Industrial City plan and will provide some of the key technology, including Intelligent Operations Center software for integrating data and information from all the systems in the port and city so they can be managed efficiently and effectively. Continue Reading »

When I left IBM just over two years ago to become the first Chief Technology Officer for the City of Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel gave me clear marching orders. I was to take the lead in setting high standards for open, participatory government to involve all Chicagoans. At the time, Chicago lagged behind other American cities in open data access and other digital city initiatives.Thanks to a lot of work and creativity by Chicagoans in government, non-profits, businesses and community groups—not to mention individuals–we have more than caught up. We achieved great progress in making city data available to all, in catalyzing an app economy and in improving digital literacy. Yet I feel that we have just scratched the surface of what’s possible when it comes to fostering participatory democracy. Continue Reading »

I grew up on a farm in Germany where my family raised cattle, horses and sheep, but I had never seen anything like the scene I recently witnessed at a cattle market in Adama, Ethiopia. The market was a sprawling collection of huts and outdoor pens crawling with all manner of livestock. Farmers, traders and buyers sized up the animals and dickered to make deals. It seemed like chaos to the untrained eye.

The Adama, Ethiopia, cattle market.

In fact, it was more like a puzzle to be solved. Two IBM colleagues and I who are members of the Corporate Service Corps team in Ethiopia were visiting Adama to learn how livestock markets in Ethiopia work. Our goal was to be able to make recommendations on how information technology could help them work better.

IBM isn’t known for having expertise in agriculture, but part of the company’s commitment to Africa is being willing to listen to the local people, understand their needs, and produce technology-based solutions that improve local businesses, economies and society as a whole. To read more, go to the CitizenIBM blog.

Rachel Haot is the chief digital officer for New York City, heading the NYC Digital program. Mayor Michael Bloomberg appointed her to the newly-created post in 2011. Previously, Haot founded GroundReport, a crowdsourced news Web site based in New York. She recently answered some questions for the A Smarter Planet blog about what it takes to make a digital city. Here’s an edited version of the interview:

A Smarter Planet: Why did you accept Mayor Bloomberg’s offer to become New York’s first chief digital officer?

Rachel Haot, NYC’s chief digital officer

Haot: I had always been interested in the intersection of technology and government, so I saw his offer as a phenomenal chance to serve the greatest city on earth and to help to galvanize the momentum that I already saw building. Our goal at the start was to create the first digital roadmap that any city has produced, and to use that roadmap to make a difference in the lives of New Yorkers.

Dr. David Sinclair, Senior Lecturer, School of Computing, Dublin City University

By Dr. David Sinclair

What skills will tomorrow’s city leaders need?

This is a very broad question, but it has a specific set of answers. Tomorrow’s urban leaders must organize, analyze and understand the resource that is Big Data. They will need to be able to use the sea of data pouring into their systems to predict how the city will operate and then build adaptable and informed plans to deal with the inevitable disruption and change. This set of skills fall under the heading of data analytics.

An increasing percentage of the world’s population lives in cities, but many of the old problems persist even as new opportunities emerge. Fortunately, a new generation of leaders, comfortable with technology, is embracing the value of data analytics in decision-making in hopes that it will help them transform their cities.

As a result, in spite of financial pressures, many cities around the globe are aggressively adopting Smarter Cities technology. In a just-issued report, Navigant Research estimates that the global market for Smart Cities technology will grow from $6.1 billion annually in 2012 to more than $20 billion in 2020, a compound annual growth rate of 16.2%. This represents a cumulative investment of over $117 billion in smart city technologies between 2012 and 2020. The same report named IBM as the #1 supplier of smart city technology. Continue Reading »

The Great One, Wayne Gretzky, once said, “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.” To keep communities safe, police need to stay several steps ahead of criminals and engage crime on a proactive basis rather than the traditional reactive model. This has been the approach of the Vancouver Police Department.

Since the deployment of investigative big data analytics software from IBM and geospatial mapping software from Esri in 2009, the Vancouver PD has been able to spot where crime is headed, and, in many cases, help stop it before it otherwise would occur. Property crime rates have dropped city-wide per 1,000 residents by 24 percent and violent crime rates have decreased by nine percent from 2007 to 2011. Here are videos about the project.

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